A couple of treats

a slideshow of modern illustrations of children’s classics, from Walker Books.

And a rather less sweet reflection: Hilary Mantel’s ‘Cinderella in Autumn‘.

Enjoy our course’s  Holiday week.

Peter Pan Covered

Arthur Rackham cover to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906)

1915 cover illustration by FD Bedford

Mabel Lucy Attwell’s Peter Pan and Wendy (1921)

For lots more, here are the results of a google search for “Peter Pan book cover”.

CLPE poetry prizewinners

Poetry for children just isn’t in the same money-spinning, prize-winning, popular  league as stories for children (any more than poetry for adults as compared to stories for adults).  Michael Rosen, praise be, did his bit as children’s laureate 2007-9.     If I search for ‘children’s poetry’ on the web, I get more about poetry by children – see here and here for instance.  The latter links poetry closely to performance – a more winning combination.

I’m slightly cheered that since 2003 an annual prize has been awarded in the UK by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education for a collection of poetry for children. (But the 2007 prizewinner is shown as ‘unavailable’ via Amazon.) I’ve listed winners below, and on the CPLE website you can see the most recent shortlist as well.

It’s pretty low-key, isn’t it?

Ah, but when a poem does hit the spot, it really does.  Some poems from my childhood are far more vivid to me than any story. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found Monro’s Overheard on a Saltmarsh in our Anthology. I thought I was the only child who had found that one.

__________

2003 :  John Agard’s  and Grace Nichols ‘ anthology of Caribbean poetry, Under the Moon and Over the Sea (Walker Books). Read ‘Windrush Child’ here.   2004 : Roger McGough’s All the Best, Selected Poems (Puffin). 2005 : Sensational! Poems Inspired by the Five Senses edited by Roger McGough (Macmillan). 2006 :  Why does my mum always iron a crease in my jeans? edited by Fiona Waters (Puffin). 2007 :  The Thing That Mattered Most. Scottish Poems for Children, edited by Julie Johnstone, illustrated by Iain McIntosh (Scottish PoetryLibrary/Black & White Publishing). 2008:  Jackie Kay for Red, Cherry Red, illustrated by Rob Ryan (Bloomsbury). 2009 : John Agard, The Young Inferno, illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura (Frances Lincoln).

“Best of 2009″ UK lists

Marking down to a trickle now; but as I’m uninspired for a post I’m grateful to Kate for a nudge. Here are a few links that might inspire you. I’ve not found a round-up of children’s poetry books of 2009, though. What does that say, I wonder?

I haven’t studied the lists yet  but I did notice  Geraldine McCaughrean, one of my favourite children’s authors,  on The Sunday Times list for her The Death Defying Pepper Roux.   This provides a tenuous relevance to our current study block – McCaughrean is author of Peter Pan in Scarlet

Daily Telegraph ‘first readers”

Independent:  best teenage fiction of 2009

Sunday Times best children’s books of 2009

Guardian: children’s and illustrated books

Edit: additions (thanks, Susan! Skip over to Chicken Spaghetti for Susan’s less UKcentric list of lists)

Telegraph: children’s books

Financial Times: Books of the year (start at the end, for children’s books)

Independent: Best children’s books

Poetry links

There is material from A210 on ‘Approaching poetry’ here.

This US blog posting is about 2009 poetry collections  available there: I haven’t checked them out but the post highlights a wonderful variousness.  In the language of our course, I suppose there are some very different representations of childhood to be found in them. Alongside poems about dinosaurs, cats, and monsters, there are bilingual (Spanish and English) poems about beans; poems about the experience of being a Vietnamese child growing up in the US post war; poems about jobs and careers.  But there are other collections that reflect the more romantic vision, too.

Not waving

..  but not quite drowning either. Just inundated with assignments (not only for EA300). Thanks to early submissions, inviting extensions, and long experience on the other courses making their assignments quicker to turn round, I will get through in a timely fashion.

But meanwhile I do feel a bit like Piglet, ‘entirely surrounded by water.’

Only figuratively, thankfully.

Dignity, always dignity

.. is the motto Don Lockwood falsely claims in Singin’ in the Rain. Does poetry have to be dignified?  Roger McGough seems to think so, according to an article in yesterday’s Guardian about poetry in advertising.

I’m just glad to have poetry around. Remember poetry on the underground – is that still going?

And there are some wonderful websites of course – a favourite of mine is the poetry archive of poets reading their own work . There’s even a children’s archive - modern poets, but also recordings of Robert Browning, and Yeats (though I can’t currently get the children’s site to work).

Giggle poetry may not be entirely dignified, of course.

I love poetry. But lots of people are hostile. Where do you stand? Let me know via the new poll.

Ideology, compare, Little Women, Treasure Island

Thanks for clicking on the poll – which I’ll be taking down shortly. If it can be believed, 116 students, or nearly 7% of those enrolled on this course, have looked at this blog in November*.  Thank you for your support and helpful comments. And here’s a big welcoming wave to the 5 potential students – move to Derby then sign up next year to keep up student numbers in my area, please!

I am practically invisible to tutor colleagues. But they’re not searching for help with their TMAs, are they? One of the features of a wordpress blog is information about ’search terms’ that have brought searchers here. I’ve put current ones in today’s title and I’ll let you know if the blog’s hit rate rockets

If I’ve tempted you here unfairly, here’s the sensible general help with OU assignments.  But the search terms might also have helped you find relevant articles: a search on google for  ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘ideology’  found  this one about how Jim has to leave domesticity to enjoy (and endure) romance in Treasure Island; and using ‘Alcott’ and ‘gender’  via the OU Library>online databases>Academic Search Complete turned up this on how the home is a ‘training ground for social behaviour’ where  ‘resentful little women’ learn the happiness of becoming ‘appropriately classed and gendered’.

The second article is a harder read than the first, I think; but both model exemplary behaviour by using close reference to the set texts.

 

*125 students, out of some 1700, when I closed the poll on 1 December.

Looking forward to …

Terry Pratchett’s Nation (a sort of noble Treasure Island?) onstage at the National now- but slated by the critics

World Book Day happens in the UK and Ireland on 4 March 2010 so that it falls in term-time – rather than on the UNESCO  day of 23 April 2010. I see the logic, but miss the happy coincidence with Shakespeare’s official birthday.

Film releases planned: March 2010 Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland November 2010 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Plans for £14 m Oxford Story Museum (to open in 2014, so patience!)

Treasure Island covered

Oh to be in Minnesota, to browse the Treasure Island Illustrated Editions Collection.  However you can click here for three internal illustrations for an 1885 edition. Below there are some covers.  Hover over for dates and illustrators, where I could identify them. The first, 1883 image, is only tiny – see it better here.